Diamond-Cut Life

The diamond-cut life is about more joy, more integrity and less consumption as we deal with global warming. The food-as-fuel track that the U.S. is on assumes unlimited consumption (driving alone, for instance) with no particular joy or integrity.
What are practical, concrete things we can do? Here is what my household is doing to use [...]

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My job in transportation options has taken me, in a new Prius, to the high desert town of Bend, Oregon (recently named by American Cowboy magazine in its Top Ten list of wild-west towns). The Prius, mud-splattered from the Santiam Pass, is now dusted with snow as well, so it reminds me of an [...]

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Of all the good pieces in today’s Green Issue of New York Times magazine, “Why Bother?” by Michael Pollan is the one that helps us see that lower-consumption lifestyles are crucial in dealing with global warming, Inventors and legislators cannot rescue us.

1.) Pollan points out that being a role model is powerful. As various citizens like you and me consume significantly less, especially in terms of fossil fuels, other

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This past Saturday night we went to the Bicycle Transportation Alliance’s (BTA’s) annual awards dinner and auction, attended by about 800 people. It’s called Alice B. Toeclips and it was invented about a decade ago by my awesome friend and mentor Karen Frost, the founding director of the BTA.

I had good conversations with great people at Toeclips, and just one reservation I’ll get to in a minute

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I recently asked a good friend how happy he was on a scale of 0 to 10. He only had to think for a few seconds. “A five,” he said. “You?”

“I’m at 9 or 10,” I replied. Interestingly, he makes about twice as much money as I do, and even likes his job (as do I). The social sciences have studied happiness quite thoroughly, so what have they

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I’m glad that Hillary Clinton is back in the presidential race. While I wish she would mount a a truly appropriate response to global warming, I respect the way she has reached across party lines in the past as a senator to help make abortion both legal and rare. (Repeated research has shown that is what most Americans would like abortion to be.)

Let’s run today with that concept of

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My husband Thor and I went to the Illahee lecture last night here in Portland. Juliet Schor spoke, a sociologist and economist from Harvard University. She was excellent, and one of the most salient takeaways for me was on clothes. (It’s only fair to report Thor has sometimes termed me ‘a bit of a clothes horse’.)

Ms. Schor reported that in 1991 we in the U.S. bought an average of 34

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In my ongoing quest for the diamond-cut life of happiness without excess consumption, I notice a couple of things.

Many non-mainstream choices I make, like carpooling, increase my happiness. (This gang of public-interest attorneys I’ve gotten mixed up with is turning out to be a hoot. So-o-o-o much more fun than driving alone.) Other choices my household makes, like heating our house with biodiesel, has a fairly neutral daily impact on

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My definition of happiness — the diamond-cut life — involves integrity as well as joy. And integrity was what I heard from evangelical Dr. Paul Metzger as he confronted the shortcomings of conservative Christianity in his book Consuming Jesus at his reading and discussion at Powells Books here in Portland the night before last.

The major shortcoming of modern evangelism and particularly megachurches is “giving people what they want

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Following up further on Ed Graef’s excellent letter to the editor of the High Country News:

At least one “liberal environmental” household (mine) has altered its lifestyle out of concern for global warming. For example, we use public transit and use less than half the electricity of the average U.S. household due to our clothesline, CFL lightbulbs and low hot water use. The list goes on, but the

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